Inferno
by Inkstain
Summary: First of the 'Four Elements' series. Spike's thoughts after the end of s6. Spoilers, obviously!


Title: Inferno

Series: Number 1 in 'Four Elements'.

Author: Inkstain - Doodlefang@yahoo.com

Summary: Spike has a very angsty think after the end of s6, 'Grave'.

Rating: PG:13, but - 

Warnings: for just the one curse (very out of character for my writing!), used twice, and references, however veiled, to rape.

Disclaimer: Spike, Dru, Angelus, Buffy and Cecily are Joss', and a mixture of Fox, the WB, Twentieth Century Fox's, and UPN. Not mine; none of 'em. Also, the definitions of Fire come from the Thesaurus on Word Perfect - aah, how you help me - so I've borrowed them too. Just so you know. 

Feedback: "Go on with you..."

Distribution: You want it; just ask, I'll first pick my jaw off the floor, and then happily oblige.

A/N: This got Jossed! Sorta. I wrote this literally four minutes after seeing s6, therefore _before_ I saw 'Beneath You' - and hoo, if Spike didn't then up and say he got his spark back, but now all it does is burn! *does the Jossed dance* Just thought I'd throw that in.

Anyway, the rest of the series - all pretty angsty, but not this bad. I think. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing! *ooer* Oh, and the ratings of the rest may be bumped up a little; be warned. 

Btw; Yes, I am one of those people who sticks to the 'Angelus finished William's turning' theory. Yes, its desperate; yes, I'm clutching at straws, and yes, I don't care. Mock it, laugh at it, point out the flaws; blatant denial works for me! 

-------------- Inferno

Fire: (n) Liveliness and vivacity of imagination

(n) Passionate devotion to or interest in a cause, subject, etc

(n) Powerful, intense emotion 

--------------

He burns.   
  
Unusual, you might say. For something so cold to burn.  
  
Scorching murmur; "How the very laws of physics are confounded..."  
  
He shifts. The ice pack drips; drip hits the cool floor and pools. The frozen water should be colder than the stone he sits on, but he can't tell anymore - and its not doing anything to cool _it_ down, even pressed to his pale, pale chest with trembling hands. Not the wound from his trials, no no, he can't even feel that anymore, and that is healing already.   
  
It's _in_ his chest. You see, he burns. Heartburn itself; literal, true, and ever so ever so _hot_...

Its too hot.

A gasp, a moan, half whimper, face turned and pressed into the rock wall. He has to deliberately breathe just to cry out - and the movement of his chest pushes against the burning, and he struggles not to cry out again.  
  
He Can't. Get. Breath. 

Can't get breath to blow out the flame in his chest; but then, he never has. Its flickering, searing, sizzling - the ages old encyclopedia of adjectives spits forth the 'ing's and 'ent's and 'ism's as always.   
  
Typical. The fire's consuming him whole and William pops up to annotate.  
  
"Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up..."  
  
Its her fault. She did it, She did. She caused that first spark and-  
  
Spark. Ha.

Not the right word, Will. Never the right word.

He bangs his face against the rock. New mantra, 'Wrong wrong wrong wrong...'

A particularly sharp groove is level with forehead, and he strikes it continuously. Blood that feels as acid in his veins but is cold on his skin pours into blue eyes that are now stained red. The rock gouges, and scrapes and-  
  
"SHUT UP!"

Burning scream torn from his chest.  
  
It cuts. It _just_ cuts. Nothing else. No words that are too fancy, and too pretty to tumble from his evil lips.  
  
Cecily was too fancy. Too pretty.  
  
My god, She was so pretty...  
  
She lit it, She did. 

"It was 'er guvnor." Maniacal laughter alights in the dead man's chest - it hitches with a flash fire and he cries out.  
  
But She did. Then the next one, pretty crazy thing, fed off the flames, followed by Him stepping up to fuel them; and William was extinguished for a while.  
  
But some fires never die out.  
  
And _she_...she'd thrown lighter fuel over him. With her skin and smile and friends and sun, and absolute refusal to just. stay. dead. Like _it_. Seemed as though it identified with her - they were cut from the same tree, the branch the fire began on and the pointy stick with which she stirred the embers.  
  
["You're beneath me."]  
  
Cecily had started it - that day she'd told him those words and he'd sat, frozen, but his cheeks and soul aflame. It started; burning in his chest beneath starch shirt and waistcoat chosen by Mother, and winter coat by him, smile alighting his face when he'd seen the inside pocket his notebook fit in.  
  
Hot. She could have seared it into his palms with an branding iron and he wished she had done, when he'd rushed outside and his burning breath made smoke in the chill air and his sparking, tingling hands had fumbled with his book and, half blinded by hot tears and concentrating on trying not to lose the pages until he could get home and throw them on the kitchen fire, he'd struck the stranger who would later kneel down and stoke the intense flame who was not William, and not yet Spike; instead a half man, bleeding on a barn floor, whose eyes had still flickered with an emotion that would not go away for two centuries.  
  
Cecily had power over him.  
  
Oh, but She knew it. Loved it even; but didn't love him. _Never_ him. He was _beneath_ her. That moment, when she looked at him with pity, and his heart had combusted and pumped hot acid around his body - that was what he thought of the first time 'Slayer' left the God-man's lips.  
  
'Slayer'. The strongest woman in the world; a woman who held more power than ten Cecily's could. He could put that woman beneath _him_. He could overpower her. She would die at _his_ hands, not the other way like in that overcrowded room of simpering high class members with high, blistering laughs. He would show that he had the power.  
  
But of course, it didn't work with Buffy. He couldn't kill her, and he couldn't love her, and she'd looked at him and said...and it was like she'd got the gasoline, then flicked a zeppo and -   
  
"Kaboommmm..."

William's fuel. 

And then she died, but came back; and she'd used him, overpowered him, and he'd _let_ her. Another Cecily; but for a while he'd been able to pretend she wasn't -- the hair being golden, not black, made it easier. Yet, even when he hadn't had that luxury with Drusilla, he'd been ruled by her for over 90 years.  
  
Oh yes, he'd lied to himself with her too. He loved Dru fiercely, always would, had forever. But she ruled him, and he just hadn't wanted to see it.  
  
Shut up shut up shut up...  
  
And Buffy...when fighting didn't work, and fucking didn't work; then that was it. He couldn't get rid of her, he couldn't have her, but he didn't want to sit anymore because his palms were burning again and underneath the scar from the plastic stake _it_ was back.  
  
And it burned.

He'd tried to get her, just once more - to win, to overpower the Slayer again and try, try and blow out the candles on that fucking death-day cake.  
  
But he'd gone too far, and let the fires rage too long.  
  
He feels sick. 

And he doesn't want to try and remember every reason why.  
  
The ice is melting now, as tendrils of heat from a slow rising sun lick at the horizon outside, and his skin must be hot to feel; but no-one will touch him now. They'd get singed fingers; and why would they want to anyway, after...after everything he's done...  
  
//thump//

He's banging the back of his head now, and the side, and Slayer's-fire scarred eyebrow, and then forehead again, and again, and again. His voice is charcoal dry as he croaks the same lines, rhythm of words in time with //drip// of ice and //thump// of head. 

"...Fire..." //drip// "...just fire..." //thump// "...Can't- //thump// -stop- //thump// -burning..."

The last bang makes his vision blur, and a desperate smile stretches his bloodless lips. If he keeps going then maybe he'll reach brain - and William can be extinguished for a time, while Spike heals him  
  
Only....Spike's buried. He's trapped underneath something again, only this time its not a church organ. And he's not going to come out of it a cripple.  
  
It's a soul. It's the myriad of feelings that he tried to smother.  
  
Its _William_.  
  
And William burns.  
  
END


End file.
